This interdisciplinary colloquium, in English, is part of the ERC project Mental Files: New Foundations, hosted by the Philosophy of Language and Mind chair at the Collège de France. It focuses on the notion of "discourse referent" and its interpretation within the theory of mental files.
Presentation
The notion of discourse referent was introduced in connection with the idea of a discourse file; a temporary file in which information is stored regarding an entity introduced in the discourse. Subsequently the notion of discourse referent was used somewhat ambiguously to stand for the discourse file itself or for the (possibly non existent) entity it is about.
Discourse files bear an interesting analogy to object files, which are temporary files deployed in visual working memory to track objects given in perception. The relations between the two types of temporary file are worth investigating. What happens when an object talked about is identified as an object seen? Do the temporary files merge, resulting in a working memory file spanning discourse and perception?
Besides dedicated temporary files of various sorts, there are standing mental files which are like entries in the mental encyclopedia. They store information about entities in the environment, gained either through perception or testimony, and they (or their labels) represent these entities in thought. The relations between temporary files (of both sorts) and the standing mental files into which they arguably evolve is also a worthwhile topic of inquiry.
A specific issue arises with respect to mental files that are about imaginary objects—objects which are given in thought but not in reality (fictional objects, hypothetical objects, etc.). Let us call them fictional files. While ordinary mental files are such that their deployment presupposes the existence of the entity they are about (the entity the subject is related to via perception or testimony), fictional files are not existentially committing. The issue arises, whether discourse files are themselves a variety of fictional file, in contrast to perceptual files which are existentially committing (while discourse files are not), or whether both discourse files and perceptual files are existentially committing and fictional files result from a decoupling operation over the more basic type of file.